Game Tablet

The Fate of Microsoft's Tablet For Gamers

Microsoft’s building a seven-inch gaming tablet that people have dubbed the Xbox Surface, but as the machine is only in the hardware-planning phase we’re thinking of just calling it the Xvapour until it actually appears. When it does appear, we’ll be impressed if it’s not an Xbox Fail™.

Xbox fanboys everywhere are already saying “Awwwww, yeaaaah — eat it, bitches” and doing that stupid finger-snap thing, but, despite the Xbox brand’s quick and impressive growth, Microsoft isn’t going to have it easy with the Xbox Surface. Rumor has it that it’s tailoring the hardware specifically for gaming speeds, but even if Microsoft could get 3D performance on par with Apple’s iPad, which consistently doubles the gaming performance of the top Android tablets, the PS3 proved that people don’t care about how pants-sh*ttingly fast your system is — there’s more to it than that.

First, there is the price, the PS3’s infamous fate sealer. Despite what little we know about the Xbox Surface, we do know it won’t be dirt-cheap. Microsoft relies on the same business model that Apple uses with the iPad — they must make their money with hardware sales. They can’t afford to sell it as a loss leader because they don’t own any content like Amazon and, unlike Google, Microsoft doesn’t generate a significant amount of advertising revenue. The days of paying $40 for a mobile game are over, so Microsoft can no longer count on a significant cut of sales without the content being sold as well, and that leaves developers to produce high-budget games to be sold at very low prices.

Even fanboys won’t buy the Xbox Surface if there aren’t any games. On Tuesday, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida said that PS Vita sales have been below expectations, with Sony only selling 1.6 million Vitas over the last quarter. To put that in perspective, Apple sold three million of the latest gen iPad and iPad minis in just the three days following launch. By all mobile gaming standards, the Vita should have succeeded: the hardware is amazing, it had a boatload of big-name games at launch, like Killzone HD, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Rayman Origins, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, FIFA Soccer and a handful of iOS ports like Dungeon Hunter. Unlike Sony, Microsoft doesn’t own any game content developers beyond the teams that have produced Halo and Age of Empires. Sony’s been buying up hot developers to make Sony-exclusive titles over the entire lifespan of the Playstation. Microsoft just hasn’t been smart that way. It’s literally paying the developers of Foursquare to port the app to Windows Phone — it would take millions to try and do that for Halo-quality games from other developers. Android now owns half the tablet market and it still doesn’t have any 3D games like Infinity Blade.

Microsoft could have made it easy on itself, but DirectX, the thing that was once its strength in getting people to develop simultaneously for Windows and the Xbox, is now its weakness. Since Microsoft doesn’t use the same OpenGL graphics technology that iOS, Sony and Android all use, it’s kind of screwed. Asking developers to produce an OpenGL version of a program for heavily entrenched platforms and a completely separate DirectX version for a platform that has no users is like joining a marathon after it’s started — and then having to wear leg irons and banana peel trainers. It’d make a great television show, but it would be tough to watch if you had money on Johnny Legiron-Bananapeelfeet (he also had cruel name-hyphenating parents).

Then there’s the physical hardware. If Microsoft brands the Xbox Surface as a “hardcore gamer’s tablet,” those seven people who qualify as hardcore gamers are going to ask, “Where are all the buttons?”

I expect the Xbox Surface will get a boost from its branding, but it could be called the Xbox Gets You Laid and it still wouldn't stand a fighting chance at unseating the iPad as the dominant tablet gaming platform. Prove me wrong, Microsoft. Prove me wrong.